70 Days Into Devastation, Envoys See Hopeful Sign

Diplomats Return To Meet Milosevic

After 70 days of bombing, finger-pointing and tough talk, the war over Kosovo on Tuesday may have came down to this: Is Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ready to recognize that NATO intends to continue its campaign against his country until it reaches its goals?

And is NATO ready to accept less than what it set out to achieve when it began the war, but enough to proclaim a limited victory?

With those questions in the air, there were signs of intensive diplomatic activity Tuesday as envoys from Russia and Finland prepared to return to Belgrade on Wednesday for more talks with Milosevic.

Both sides now seem eager to find a solution.

Belgrade sits in frustrating darkness, its power plants disabled by NATO bombing. "Collateral damage" from the air campaign claims more civilian lives each day. Milosevic has been reduced by a war-crimes tribunal indictment to the status of an arrest-on-sight criminal in almost every nation's capital.

Yugoslavia, a nation with few financial resources and not many prospects before the war, has suffered billions of dollars in damages. Its bridges have been dropped into rivers. Its airports have been cratered. Its highways and communications centers have been destroyed.

And even though Milosevic's army and police units are intact and have shown little mercy to Kosovar Albanians herded at gunpoint from their homes, their real enemy is all but untouchable, attacking from thousands of feet in the air or from distant ships.

On NATO's side, the alliance clearly failed in its key objective: stopping the forced removal of Kosovar Albanians, a process that became more brutal and more massive after the bombing campaign began on March 24.

NATO's suggestion early on that modern warfare can somehow be as clean as laser surgery succumbed after a few days of reports of accidental bomb hits on hospitals, trains and buses.

Bombs fell in the wrong place again Tuesday, this time hitting some World War II-era bunkers on the wrong side of the Albanian border. NATO planes also hit tanks and Serbian troop positions and bombed oil supply depots Tuesday, a reminder that they plan to continue the bombing even if a potential peace breakthrough is at hand.

"Peace is possible very soon," said Yugoslav Minister without Portfolio Goran Matic in Belgrade, but he blamed the United States and Britain for creating problems.

"They want to continue the bombing campaign," he said.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said NATO will stick to its demands and "will not settle for less."

In a letter to German diplomats released Tuesday, Yugoslav government officials said Milosevic was ready to accept the terms defined by the Group of 8, the name given to the seven major industrialized nations and Russia. The terms essentially are the same as NATO's, except for a key sticking point about international peacekeeping forces.

That clearly was the focus of a diplomatic frenzy Tuesday, as U.S. officials underlined once again their insistence that any future peacekeeping force must have NATO at its heart. A string of NATO members chimed in, making clear the distant scent of peace is not going to fracture the coalition in a debate over terms.

The letter from Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer reiterated that Yugoslavia is now accepting the terms set down weeks ago by the G-8 nations for peace.

"In this regard, as you are aware, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has accepted G-8 principles, including a United Nations presence, mandate and other elements to be decided by a United Nation's Security Council resolution in accordance with the UN Charter," the letter said.

"In order to achieve a successful solution, it is necessary immediately to end the NATO aerial bombardment and to concentrate on a political agenda aimed at reaching a stable and long-lasting political settlement," the letter said.

Although the bombing didn't stop, the letter was viewed as an important step toward a solution.

A senior Belgrade-based diplomat said Milosevic was ready for a deal and predicted it would take only two or three more meetings with Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the European Union envoy, to achieve one.

Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari met in Bonn on Tuesday with other EU leaders and U.S. envoy Strobe Talbott to review the case that will be presented to Milosevic.

The Serbian leader was driven to accept the G-8 terms by the intensity of the bombing campaign, which has exhausted the Yugoslav people, according to a Belgrade-based diplomat, who also said Milosevic doesn't want to face the prospects of a ground war with NATO forces.

There was an internal political reality at work, too, that had been hinted at the beginning of the war.

Because Kosovo is so important to Serbs, Milosevic would have jeopardized his own political position if he had given it up without some kind of battle.